Macpherson: Student leaders have lost credibility

MONTREAL - In 1957, United States president Dwight Eisenhower sent soldiers to Little Rock, Arkansas, to protect nine students from mob violence and assert their right to go to school.

In 1962, attorney-general Robert Kennedy sent U.S. marshals and soldiers to the University of Mississippi, where they enforced a court order and defended the right of one student to go to class against rioting fellow students and others.

And in 1963, president John Kennedy ordered the Alabama National Guard to enforce a court order over the objections of the governor of the state and assert the right of two students to go to the University of Alabama.

In all three cases, the students were the first blacks to attend previously all-white schools in the South.

The issue is different in the current dispute over tuition fees in Quebec.

Here the masked hooligans wear the red square of a student “strike” that has no legal status, instead of carrying the Confederate battle flag symbolizing discriminatory “states’ rights.”

But they have no more right, moral or legal, to obstruct or intimidate students trying to go to school than the Ku Klux Klan did in the U.S. South a half-century ago.

So if it is necessary to use force to clear the way for our college and university students to exercise their right to go to class, then the Charest government might find itself in good historical company.

If it didn’t, it might be because the government stood by idly for so long while that right was violated, increasingly threatening the students’ semester.

Premier Jean Charest announced last night that the government will propose legislation “soon” to “suspend” until August the semester at colleges and university departments and faculties where students are “on strike,” allowing for a cooling-off period.

He would not confirm reports that the bill would also provide for heavy fines for anyone interfering with the right to go to class.

Such a law could lead to more violence, if it failed as a deterrent, since it would be difficult to identify masked lawbreakers for the purpose of laying charges against them without police arresting them on the spot.

On the evening of Tuesday, the 93rd day of the “strikes,” the government still held out hope – or pretended to – for a settlement negotiated with the “leaders.”

Two, there was nothing to negotiate, since this movement would settle for nothing less than the cancellation of the tuition increases.

And three, there was really nobody with whom to negotiate, since the movement was effectively leaderless.

The so-called “leaders” of the student associations had proven themselves irrelevant as well as irresponsible and inept after a first round of negotiations May 4-5.

They had already used violence as a tactic, continuing to organize demonstrations despite the risk of violence they claimed to be unable to prevent.

They had then sabotaged the “offer” they had negotiated with the government by refusing to recommend its acceptance.

And when the offer was resoundingly rejected, it showed that they did not speak for their members.

Line Beauchamp blamed their intransigence for her resignation on Monday as education minister.

Her resignation looked as though it might encourage the fee protesters to hold out against a government that appeared to be weakening. But it also allowed Charest to replace her with the more conciliatory Michelle Courchesne in time for one last round of talks with the “leaders” on Tuesday, while he threatened to take unspecified action later in the week to protect the right to go to class.

Courchesne would be the good cop, while Charest would take over from Beauchamp as the bad cop.

But Beauchamp’s resignation apparently failed to produce the “electroshock” for which she had hoped.

Courchesne reported on Wednesday that she had found the student “leaders” to be no less intransigent than Beauchamp had.

But the “leaders’” minds were concentrated wonderfully by a report in Wednesday’s La Presse that the government was ready to introduce its legislation.

Suddenly, the “leader” of the college students’ federation, Léo Bureau-Blouin, announced that he and the others were prepared not only to negotiate a compromise, but to recommend it this time to their members.

Even then, however, there would be no guarantee that the street marchers and campus goon squads who now form the real “strike” movement would accept it.

Trust us, Bureau-Blouin assured the government. But by that point, why would it? Why would anybody?

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